


Lifebond

by onstraysod



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Comfort Sex, Conversations, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Helmet removal, Intimacy, One Shot, Prompt Fill, which is apparently my thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:28:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22724722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onstraysod/pseuds/onstraysod
Summary: Mourning the loss of Kuill and opening up about their respective pasts, Din Djarin and Cara Dune take their friendship to an unexpected level of intimacy.
Relationships: Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 145





	Lifebond

**Author's Note:**

  * For [politicalmamaduck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/politicalmamaduck/gifts).



> Written for politicalmamaduck for the prompt "Mando x Cara, after the last battle and mourning Kwiil. They comfort each other." 
> 
> I'm not sure if I ship Din and Cara as friends, lovers, or something in between, but I love their relationship and this was a challenge I was eager to accept! Hopefully I did the excellent prompt justice.

The whine of an Imperial speeder bike brought Din up, blaster drawn, but his alarm faded as the rider came into view. Cara Dune banked the bike sharply around the _Razor Crest_ and pulled to a stop a few yards in front of the makeshift grave where Din stood.

“Turns out there _was_ one more stormtrooper left,” she said with a wry smile as she climbed from the seat. 

“Clearly not anymore.” Din looked down at the child cradled in his left arm. The sound of the bike had roused the little creature from a nap, and it was cooing in recognition of Cara’s voice. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to help.” Cara gestured at Kuill’s grave. Din had just laid a final stone over the Ugnaught’s remains. “Looks like you didn’t need any, though.”

“It was my responsibility.” He paused for a moment, considering his work. “I shouldn’t have brought him here. He’s dead because I did.”

“He came because he cared about the kid. And about you. Don’t blame yourself for it. In the end, it was his choice.” Cara walked nearer, reaching out to pat the child’s head as the creature squealed in greeting. “If anyone should be feeling bad here, it’s me. I wasn’t fair to him.”

“He admired you.”

Cara laughed. “I don’t think so.”

“Of course he did. He wouldn’t have been so concerned about your stripes if he hadn’t. He admired your courage, your loyalty. Your passion.”

Cara arched one brow. “Is that what they call being a loudmouth these days?” She glanced down at the grave and sighed. “Did he tell you all that?”

Din knelt to place Kuill’s googles and helmet at the head of the grave. “He didn’t need to.” It wasn’t a lie - Kuill had spoken admiringly of Cara - but Din was aware that the particular sentiments he’d expressed were probably more his own.

“So you’ll be leaving now, I suppose,” Cara said when Din rose again. Smiling, she pointed to the child. “This one can barely keep his eyes open.” The creature burbled incoherently, his eyelids closing, then opening, then closing again.

“He’s had a busy day. I had planned to leave right away, but it might be better to slip off after sunset. Feel like hanging around for awhile?”

Cara nodded. “I’d like that.”

“I’ll put the kid inside.” Before Din could head to the ship’s gangway, Cara reached over and gave the child another stroke on the cheek. Those large, luminous eyes were firmly shut now, the little mouth parting around rhythmic breaths. “When I told you to take care of him, I meant for you to take care of yourself too. You do that better when you’ve got back up.” She fixed her gaze on the visor of Din’s helmet. “I’d go with you, you know.”

The Mandalorian was silent for a moment. “I couldn’t ask that of you.”

Cara shrugged. “Maybe I want you to.” A pause, then she grinned. “Just so I can turn you down.”

***

As Nevarro’s sun disappeared below the horizon, they sat together outside in the mild night air, talking as they cleaned and checked their weapons. A low beam illuminator lit a small circle around them, its light set to a spectrum that would not attract the attention of the planet’s ravening night creatures the way a fire surely would. An hour or more had passed, and Cara was making her way through a flask of Corellian whiskey that she kept on her belt. Setting his pulse rifle aside, Din stretched, then began unfastening the closures that secured the cuirass to his chest. As he shrugged out of the armor, Cara’s hands stilled on her blaster, watching him.

“So you can remove the rest of your armor in front of others, just not your helmet?”

“Yes.” Din set the cuirass aside, rubbing at his left shoulder. Cara noticed that the fabric of his shirt there was stained with blood.

“How’s your wound?”

“Mostly healed. The IG gave me a bacta infusion.”

“You took your helmet off for it?”

“There was no dishonor. It wasn’t a living being.”

Shaking her head, Cara went back to scrubbing the carbon scoring from the barrel of her blaster. “I’m sorry, but it’s a truly twisted code that will let you show your face to a lifeless droid but not to your best friend.”

Din stared at her, the gleam of the illuminator playing in bands across the surface of his helmet. Cara threw her hands up. “What? Oh come on, give me that at least. Who else would have left Sorgon to follow you here?”

“Thank you for that, by the way.”

“No need to thank me. I’ll go anywhere to fry some imps.”

“Did you mean it? What you said earlier?” Din asked after a few moments of silence. “About wanting me to ask you to come along?”

Cara sighed. “I don’t know. It was nice, feeling wanted. When you walked back into that cantina, I admit, it felt good. For my skills to be valued for something more than cheap mercenary work. But don’t get me wrong, I do get tired of it, you know? The fighting. The wars. I mean, we fought a rebellion to end this, but every time you take out one stormtrooper, twenty more crawl out of some hole, still blindly loyal to a beaten regime. People keep dying - a shock trooper captain who survived every damn battle from the beginning of the war gets shot out of the sky the day after the Empire falls - and Kuill… He buys his freedom after decades of servitude, only to be killed by what’s left of those who enslaved him… It all just seems so pointless sometimes.”

She took a long drink from her flask, then let her head fall, the blaster hanging limp from her hands. Din watched her silently for a moment, then reached over and gently squeezed her shoulder. “Hey, you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry, I’ve just… been carrying around a lot of baggage.”

“I get it.”

Cara looked at him for a long moment, her expression softening the longer her eyes remained on him. “Yeah, I know you do.” They lapsed into a slightly strained silence, but when Cara spoke again her tone was teasing. “You know, where I come from, it’s said you can only trust a person you can look in the eye.”

“I am looking you in the eye.”

The deadpan manner in which Din said this made Cara burst out laughing. “See? That’s exactly what I mean. I can’t tell if you’re mocking me right now or being completely serious.”

“Maybe a little bit of both.”

“That’s what I thought.” She shoved Din’s arm playfully, then grew serious again. “What if it never ends, huh? These wars? The Empire?” Nodding at the ship, she added: “What if all we pass on to the next generation is one royally screwed up galaxy full of criminals and other people who only know violence? What if that’s our legacy?”

Din shook his head. “It won’t be.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I can’t. But I have to believe it.”

“You’re full of surprises, Din Djarin,” Cara said, and to Din’s astonishment she leaned over against him, resting her head on his shoulder.

For a moment Din sat as if stunned, hardly daring to breathe. He could count on his hands the number of times another person had been this close to him. That didn’t include the bounties he’d had to wrestle to submission, or the adversaries he’d taken down with a chokehold or a blade deftly slipped between the joins of a space suit. Mandalorian armor had that effect: it drew the eye while discouraging approach. Beings didn’t sling their arms or tentacles around a Mandalorian in a spirit of camaraderie; people certainly didn’t lay their heads on a Mandalorian’s shoulder.

Cara’s nearness both frightened and thrilled Din. The warm solidity of her body as she leaned against him was wonderfully strange, like the memory of a dream fading in the dawn. Hesitantly, Din slid his arm around Cara, rubbing her shoulder with his gloved hand.

“So there are no exceptions?”

“Exceptions to what?”

“The Code. The helmet thing.”

Din sighed. “Only after marriage. Though--" He paused, remembering something he’d heard discussed many years before.

“What?”

“There’s supposed to be some obscure, much contested tenet that allows for the removal of one’s helmet in the presence of a lifebond.”

“What’s a lifebond?”

“A being who risked their own life to save the life of a Mandalorian,” Din explained.

Cara turned her head sharply to stare at him. “Risked their own life to save… You mean exactly what I did during the firefight when you got knocked on your ass by the E-web explosion?”

Din shifted uncomfortably. “Like I said, it isn’t accepted by all Mandalorians as a valid tenet of the Code.”

“Meaning that it _is_ accepted by some, right?” When Din said nothing in response, Cara huffed a sigh of frustration and took another swig from her flask. “For kriff’s sake. You and your Code.”

“Why does it matter so much to you?” Din asked, not without some irritation, “whether I take off my helmet or not?”

“It doesn’t. You live your life however you want, it’s no business of mine. Still…” She bit her lip, looking aside at him slyly. “I’m curious. And I like you. I don’t like many people, as you can probably guess. I trust even fewer. But you’re different. And when you’re gone, off crisscrossing the galaxy trying to find the kid’s people, I-- I don’t know. When I think of you, I suppose I’d like to think of something more than a shiny helmet.”

Cara settled herself more snugly against Din’s shoulder, and Din fought against a rising tide of confused emotions he could not piece apart. He was genuinely astonished by Cara’s words, not quite able to comprehend such an expression of affection. As he rubbed her shoulder, one of his fingers slipped across a tendril of her dark hair and he was struck by a sudden, overwhelming desire to feel the texture of it against his skin. Reaching over with this opposite hand, he loosened his vambrace and pulled off his glove.

Cara didn’t react immediately. Din wasn’t certain she was even still awake: that Corellian whiskey was potent stuff. He took the strand of her hair between his fingers, surprised by its softness, the way it slid like synth silk against his flesh. But what was there to be surprised by, he wondered? Strong and fearless as she was, there was much that was soft about Cara Dune of Alderaan. The curve of her hip where it met his, the press of her cheek to his shoulder between pauldron and throat. The look in her eyes earlier when she’d stroked the child’s ear in parting. The fullness of her lips, though that was something he could only guess at…

Reaching up, Cara grasped Din’s bare hand, turning her face to look at it. Her own hands were ungloved, and she ran the fingers of both along each of his fingers and across his knuckles, studying them. “You have nice hands, Din Djarin,” she murmured thoughtfully, and the sound of his name in her mouth again made the breath catch in Din’s throat.

Cara reached over and grabbed Din’s right hand from where it lay upon his thigh. Ignoring his reflexive attempt to pull away, she unfastened his vambrace and began slowly tugging off that glove, giving a gentle pull at the tip of each finger, Cara slid the glove down past his knuckles, then off. She toyed with his hand, threading her fingers between his. “You’re younger than I thought.”

“Hardly.” The response croaked roughly from Din’s mouth. The stroke of Cara’s hands had nearly paralyzed him. What happened next stunned him still more.

Lifting his right hand to her mouth, Cara pressed a kiss to the back of it. Din gave an involuntary jerk, something between a spasm and a full-body tremble, and Cara glanced up at him, smirking.

“You liked that, didn’t you?” Din wasn’t able to answer; he merely stared as Cara touched her lips to his knuckles, then to the backs of his fingers. “How long has it been, Din Djarin, since somebody kissed you?”

It was, he thought indistinctly, a good thing he couldn’t talk at that moment. How could he have said that, not counting his dead parents, he had never been kissed? That the sensation of a kiss was as strange and awe-inspiring to him as the child levitating a mudhorn with its mind. He shook his head a little, dumbly, and Cara turned his hand over and kissed his palm. Her lips were plush and moist with liquor, and she parted them just enough to apply a little suction to his flesh. A shiver spread through Din’s limbs and he gulped desperately against the knot in his throat, forcing it down so he could speak: warn her, scold her, push her away.

“Cara.”

All he could get out was her name. He hadn’t meant it as an invitation, exactly, but she seemed to take it as such, for she turned towards him and slid her leg over his lap. With her hands braced against his chest, she leaned in and angled her face between his shoulder and the base of his helmet, finding the bare skin of his throat. Din gasped roughly as her lips touched him, as they parted and she sucked, drawing hot blood up into his head, making him reel. Instinctively, he grasped her back with one hand, her hip with the other, as the tip of her tongue swiped against his pounding pulse, and he tipped his head back, widening the gap between helmet and collar and giving Cara more ground over which to work.

“It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?” she whispered, and her tone was both teasing and breathless. Straddling him as she was, she hadn’t missed the growing hardness against her thigh, nor the way Din shifted to try and hide it. Sliding a hand down his chest, Cara brushed her fingers over his erection and Din moaned, half-heartedly attempting to push her away, succeeding only in pulling her closer. “For me too,” she added, stroking him through the cloth of his trousers, feeling his shape and length.

“Cara, for kriff’s sake,” Din groaned. “This-- this will only complicate things.”

“It doesn’t need to. We’re just satisfying a need we both have. And who better to turn to for that than a friend?” She left off fondling Din to grasp his hand and bring it up to her breast. Din was motionless for a moment; then he spread his fingers to encompass her, finding the bud of her nipple through her shirt and grinding his thumb against it, softly at first, then with increasing pressure. Cara sighed and pushed into Din’s hand while her fingers found the clasp of his belt.

“Are we really doing this?” he asked, his voice breaking over the words as he slid his hand beneath the hem of her shirt, feeling the warm smoothness of her stomach under his fingertips.

“Yeah. On one condition.”

“What’s that?”

Cara drew a deep, steadying breath. “I have to see your face.”

Before Din could protest, Cara gripped his helmet and lifted it off. Her lips parted as she looked at him for the first time, her dark eyes wide with some mix of emotions Din didn’t dare try to identify. Reaching out, she brushed her fingertips lightly against the cut he’d sustained earlier across the bridge of his nose. Then she tossed the helmet carelessly aside and she shook her head.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, you know that? After all that fuss about taking it off, you might at least have had the decency to be ugly.”

Grasping his face with both hands, Cara claimed Din’s mouth. Still stunned by the removal of his helmet, he gave a helpless mewl of protest that dissolved quickly into a groan of surprised arousal. As unprepared as he was for the act of kissing, Din found Cara a skillful teacher and himself a willing pupil. He opened his lips to her and Cara went deep, sliding her tongue against his, whimpering as his bare palm reached the curve of her breast. She leaned into him, pushing him backwards to the ground.

“Ouch!” Breaking away from Cara’s mouth, Din winced and reached behind his head, pulling out a large rock. 

“Oh kriff, Din, are you okay?” She hovered over him, desire placed on pause for a moment as her fingers searched the back of his head. “I forgot about your wound--"

Din leaned up. “It’s just a little sore still--"

“I’m sorry.” Gazing at him tenderly, she smiled and pressed a kiss to his cheek, then the hinge of his jaw, then his lips. “Maybe you should be on top,” she whispered against the rim of his ear.

Din swallowed. “Yeah. I think that’s a good idea.”

They changed positions, Cara pulling Din down upon her, unfastening his trousers and slipping one hand inside while he sought her mouth. He couldn’t get enough of tasting her, his tongue licking into her sweet heat, and he kept exploring as he pulled her belt loose and began working her trousers past her hips.

The handful of encounters he’d had passed in a blur through Din’s memory: females from an array of species at brothels on various planets, and that one horrible mistake with Xi’an. There was pain and shame interlaced with each memory, none more so than the time he’d spent with a particularly beautiful Mirialan on the Ring of Kafrene. He’d paid extra for several hours with her, her luscious chartreuse skin laid bare to his hands as she rode him. Lost in a haze of pleasure, he’d thought she was staring at him with something like love in her eyes until he’d realized she was looking at her own reflection in his helmet, and he’d gone back to the Razor Crest afterwards and wept like a child. The others had all been cold and cruel in their efficiency: they’d earned their credits, he’d gotten his release, and in the case of Xi’an a knife scar across his left pectoral, visible to that day. 

But Din had never experienced anything like what Cara was doing to him now. With firm, sure strokes she’d roused him past the point of no return, and he throbbed in the embrace of her hand as she shifted to guide him inside. Panting against her throat, Din buried himself inside Cara with a soft moan, surrendering to the instinctual rhythm of his body as she tugged up his shirt, clutching at the flexing muscles of his back.

“Din.” She murmured his name, smiling around the sound of it, one hand coming up to rake through his hair. “Din.” She kept repeating it, scattered syllables between gasping cries, her hands moving to grip at his shoulders, his hips, his ass: any bit of bare skin she could reach and mark with the indentation of her fingers. The ground was hard, their movements awkward and constrained by their clothes, and they both came far too soon. But the slow descent was almost better than the fevered climb. Now there was leisure for exploration, and they both indulged with mouths and hands. Din pushed up Cara’s shirt, moving down to kiss her breasts, his stubble tickling against the swollen hardness of her nipples; Cara drew his shirt off in turn, mouthing at his chest and the taut muscles of his stomach, biting softly into his shoulder as her hands traced his spine. Here and there her fingers trailed off to follow the line of a scar left by a pulse weapon or blaster bolt, and Din buried his face in her hair, trembling at what felt like the ultimate exposure, the secrets of his body spilling themselves beneath her touch.

It might have been as long as an hour, or as brief as ten minutes: neither of them knew. But finally they simply lay side by side, silent, staring up at the distant stars. Cara was the first to stir, turning her head to gaze at Din, lifting her hand to stroke her fingers across his lips.

“We’re not going to be awkward with each other now, are we?”

Din leaned up, propping his head on his hand and returning her gaze. “I was just wondering something.”

“What?”

“Who was he?”

Cara’s brow furrowed. “Who was who?”

“That shock trooper captain. Killed the day after the Empire fell.”

She looked away, back up at the sky, and sighed. “Just someone I cared about once. In another life.” She was quiet for a moment before adding: “That’s what it seems like, doesn’t it, when you lose someone? Like they belonged to a completely different lifetime than the one you’re still living.”

Din nodded. “It does.” He paused, running his fingers thoughtfully down Cara’s arm, letting his touch linger on the dark stripes of her tattoo. “Your family… Were they all…?”

“On Alderaan. Yeah.” She sighed again and this time there was a shudder in the sound, a suppression of emotion. “And your parents?”

Din focused on the illuminator, on the side panels of the _Razor Crest_ : on anything else to avoid Cara’s gaze. “The Clone Wars. Cost me my whole family.”

“We’re a sorry pair,” Cara said, but then she smiled at him. “But at least you’ve gotten a second family.” Nodding at the ship, she sat up. “Speaking of which, you should probably check on him. And I should get going.” She began setting her clothes to rights and Din took one last look at the supple curve of her back, the side of a breast, then laid down again, cushioning his head on his arm. An asteroid shot through the upper atmosphere, streaking across his field of vision and leaving a jagged, violet trail behind his eyes.

“I’m not cut out to be someone’s guardian, Cara,” he said, feeling the weight of responsibility descend upon him again, settling like a stone. And yet there was a sense of freedom, too, in admitting it. “I don’t know how.”

“For a Mandalorian, you are sorely lacking in ego. You’re not the first one I’ve met, you know.” Cara stood, fastening her belt and replacing her blasters in their holsters. Din raised an eyebrow mischievously.

“Dare I ask…”

Cara laughed. “What, you think Mandalorians are a kink of mine? Don’t flatter yourself. Anyway, this guy was a real jerk. I ran into him during the Rebellion. Scuffed-up armor, looked like he’d gone ten rounds with a rancor, but he couldn’t shut up. Boasted about all the big names he’d taken in.”

“Couldn’t have been a real Mandalorian, then,” Din mused, avoiding the thought that some might wonder the same of him. “It’s against the Code to speak of your victories. Probably just salvaged the armor somewhere.”

“Yeah, maybe. He was certainly a big talker. The point I’m trying to make with this is, a guy like that - the more they mouth off, the less they can really do. Whereas you barely speak at all, and yet I’ve never seen anyone fight better. I don’t think there’s anything you _can’t_ do, Din Djarin.”

Sitting up again, watching Cara move about in the glow of the illuminator, Din spoke the words that welled up suddenly inside him. “Come with us, Cara.”

Surprised, she stared at him for a moment silently before grinning. “Nah. I don’t want you getting too used to me.” Kneeling beside him, Cara touched Din’s cheek and kissed him softly on the lips. Her dark eyes sparkled playfully as she pulled away. “But I don’t want you to be a stranger either. I’m bound to get myself into trouble one of these days, and I’ll need you by my side. I’m your lifebond, remember? You owe me one.” 

Taking her hand in his, Din pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “I’ll make good on that debt.”


End file.
